Right hand they leave thy cliffs, Craigforth!
And soon that bulwark of the north,
Grey Stirling, with its tower and town,
Upon their fleet career look'd down.
Scott.
On the way from Cadzow to Stirling, though frequently honoured by the society of the regent, who requested him to ride near his person, Florence was sad, sombre, and abstracted; for his heart was full of fiery and bitter thoughts. In Arran's train there rode a hundred horse, mostly gentlemen, all well mounted, richly apparelled, and splendidly armed. As many of these were Hamiltons, they viewed with some jealousy and mistrust the sudden familiarity which seemed to exist between the stranger and their chief. The events which had taken place since the night of his landing at Leith had almost soured his heart against his own countrymen; at least these events had filled it with a thirst for vengeance on all who were in league against the regent Arran; for with those, and such as those, he correctly classed the men who had laid such deadly snares for his destruction, and had pursued with such rancour one who had done them no wrong.
Champfleurie he had resolved to slay, without much preface or ceremony, on the first available opportunity. He had similar benevolent views regarding the laird of Millheugh, the Lord Kilmaurs, and so many others, that, had he possessed the hands of Briareus, and had in every hand a sword, he would not have found them too many to fulfil his mental and hostile engagements. His old inborn and hereditary hatred of Preston was still unwavering, though tinged with compunction; for he could not but remember and acknowledge the generosity of the old man on whose grey hairs he had hurled his scorn, his obliquy, and defiance.
And then came to memory his love—his unknown love—so beautiful and so playfully mysterious—a countess, yet one whose name he had failed to discover among the many countesses who, by the policy or loyalty of their husbands, clustered about the person of Mary of Lorraine; for it was becoming evident to all, that if a false move in the great games of war and politics were made by Arran, she, when supported by the Guises, a French army under D'Essé d'Epainvilliers, and those Scottish lords who adhered to her, would not fail to obtain for herself that which she prized more than life—the regency of Scotland.
The train of Arran rode rapidly, to reach Stirling in time, lest the train of the queen-mother, who was coming from Edinburgh, might enter the town before them; and on this journey Florence could perceive, from incidents that occurred, how the people and the times were changing.
The wild white bulls were seen in great numbers about the woods of Cumbernauld, and the gentlemen of the regent's troop pursued and shot one of great size and beauty for mere sport, while it was grazing on the wild furzy heath of Fannyside-muir. They assigned the carcass to three of the Queen's bedesmen, or blue-gown beggars, who were passing, and then rode heedlessly on their way; though on an oak by the wayside there hung the festering and hideous remains of two poor Egyptians, who had been put to death by Malcolm Lord Fleming of Cumbernauld for having slain one of these useless white oxen for food.
At Templar-denny, they crossed the Carron by an ancient bridge of four pointed Gothic arches, built by the Knights of the Temple in the reign of David I.; and there, as the glittering train of Arran rode through the village, the whole population were assembled on the bank of the river, in wild commotion, to duck a woman accused of witchcraft, while the air was rent by shouts of—
"A witch! a witch!—banes to the bleeze, and soul to the deil!"
The victim was a hag, old enough, and ugly enough, to support the character. She had dwelt apart from all in a wretched hut upon the haunted Hill of Oaks, and was accused of working much evil to a man who once mocked her years. By one spell she had stopped his mill for nine days and as many nights; thus, though the Carron swept through the mill-race with the fury of a summer flood, the old moss-encrusted and wooden wheel stood still and immovable; but when it did turn, it was with a vengeance indeed! It whirled with such velocity that the mill took fire and was soon reduced to ashes; and all this she had achieved by the simple agency of burying a black cat alive, and casting above it three handfuls of salt.
She shrieked piteously for aid and for mercy, as Arran's glittering train swept past; but the age of chivalry was gone—vile superstition had taken its place; and all these hundred lords, knights, and gentlemen, rode on their way, abandoning this unhappy being to the fury of a mob, who soon ended her sufferings in the waters of the Carron, which swept her body to the Firth.
The Reformation, with the superstition of witchcraft, grew and flourished side by side in Scotland.
As the regent's train traversed the district famed still as the Scottish Marathon, a proof was seen of the progress the whole kingdom was making towards a universal apostasy from Rome. Though a body of Cistercian nuns, on a pilgrimage from the priory of Emanuel, on the Avon, were heard singing the sexte, or noonday service of their order, in the chapel of St. Mary at Skoek, and the harmony of their sweet voices came delightfully on the soft wind that swayed the masses of wavy grain, and rustled the foliage of the Torwood at Bannockburn, one of those crosses which piety of old had placed in almost every Scottish village, had been overthrown in the night; the arms of this symbol of redemption had been shattered, and the effigy of the Great Martyr was dashed to fragments, which were strewed over the roadway.
Florence was neither devout nor bigoted, yet, like many of the regent's train, he felt that there was something in this new spectacle and sacrilege which deeply wounded his heart, and all the old traditions—if we may so name the solemn faith in which his mother reared him, and in which so many of his ancestors had died—rushed like a flood upon his soul. Several gentlemen checked their horses, and frowned or muttered; others smiled heedlessly and covertly, for the day was coming when all reverence for the cross and triple crown of Rome would be lost amid the stern opposition of one portion of the Scottish nation and the apathetic indifference of the other.